


I Hear a Call

by fae_of_the_rose



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 15:14:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3254420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fae_of_the_rose/pseuds/fae_of_the_rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Calling me there...</i><br/>I will go there...<br/>And back again</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Hear a Call

**Author's Note:**

> So a while back on tumblr there was a post proposing that everything after Bilbo being knocked out by Bolg in BoFA was just a fever dream of his. I don't have the link to it, sadly, but this is my response to it.
> 
> Previously posted on my [tumblr](http://fae-of-the-rose.tumblr.com), moved here because tumblr's changes are...tumblr's changes. If you read it there, this is a slightly cleaned up and barely altered version. Only my tumblr and AO3 have permission to host this fanfic.

“This…Thorin Oakenshield?”

It takes everything he has not to snarl at the Hobbit, asking what right he has to call Thorin by that name when he didn’t know him, didn’t travel with him and watch him die. Instead, he just sighs.

“He was my friend.”

Bilbo retreats into Bag End as the solicitor closes the auction, apologizing to everyone, and offering to help Bilbo retrieve his belongings (while also promising to compensate those who purchased something). He doesn’t care. He can go about getting his things sorted out in a moment; first he must assess the damage.

Oh, the damage. It reminds him of Erebor—and the memory of the mountain is still painful enough to cause him to flinch, a pain in his head and his heart that he doesn’t think will ever heal.

( _“Hold him down! Down,I say, he’ll pull his stitches if he keeps flinching like this!”_

 _“Dwalin, grab his arms. Ori—”_ )

Bilbo shakes his head to clear the voices. None of that now. He has things to do.

The smial is a dusty mess, his papers and other unvaluable things scattered about as if they were so much rubbish. There are his handkerchiefs, those silly things he’s gone without for over a year, and—

Rage burns in him when he spots his mother’s painting on the floor. How _dare_ they? How dare they treat her with such disrespect?! He knows for a fact that many of those Hobbits, those selfish grubby stupid Hobbits admired his mother! And they have the nerve to knock her painting down and not pick it up? Not even to simply set it back on the mantle?

How dare they.

But he’s back now. He can set it to rights. He can set everything to rights and he will no longer be a heartbroken—

(A part of him understands now that this is how Thorin must have felt when he returned to Erebor.

And then the rest of him doesn’t want to think about Thorin because if he does, he can hear his voice. _“Master Baggins, please return to us. It’s safe now. You can wake up…”_ )

* * * * *

“…please, Bilbo.”

Óin shakes his head. “You are in no state t’be clinging to the Hobbit like that, y’Majesty. Lie down.” Thorin, injured as he is, doesn’t listen and Óin didn’t expect him to. He hasn’t heeded anyone’s advice since they brought Bilbo in from Ravenhill after the battle with a head wound and several broken ribs that nearly pierced his heart and lungs, not to mention Mahal knew how many bruises.

Well, that’s to be expected. Thorin's refusal to listen, that is, not their Hobbit's injuries. A Dwarf in love rarely listens to anyone else when their heart is in danger—and Bilbo is in such danger. His wound has stopped bleeding by now, a week after the battle, but he hasn’t yet awoken. Frankly, Óin doesn’t think he will wake up, not from a knock to the head like that, but he’s not dumb enough to say it out loud, just like he isn’t dumb enough to say that he doesn’t think Fíli will ever walk again or that he’s fairly certain the Elf-maid isn’t going to want to leave their Kíli any time soon.

Oh, well.

He watches Thorin for a moment more before shaking his head and moving on to the next Dwarf.

* * * * *

“Y’know, I heard he’s not really _him_ , just a clever Dwarven imposter!”

“I did see ol’ Gandalf the Grey right b’fore Mister Bilbo ran off. Maybe he’s been magicked!”

“No, I haven’t.” There was a small sense of smug delight at seeing the two gossiping old hens jump when he spoke up, kicking up dust and dirt as they scrambled to seem professional. “I am me, as the mayor himself has declared, and so I would thank you not to speak about matters you know nothing of…and to sell me that chicken there, if you would be so kind.” The women in their faded dresses hurriedly fill his order and take his coin; Bilbo barely spares them a farewell as he turns and heads back up the Hill. 

It’s been three months since his return. The gossip has yet to die down, though Bag End is once more as it should be and Bilbo has easily slid back into the role of a proper gentlehobbit. Or at least as much of one as he can be, manners perfect and waistcoat worn just so, tea at four and (the pretense of having) his meals at exactly the right time. No one quite believes that he’s the same Bilbo Baggins as before and, well, he isn’t, is he? The Bilbo Baggins of a year ago would never ignore his doorbell. The Bilbo Baggins of a year ago didn’t spend his hours between wakefulness and sleep wandering idly from room to room, dusting where there was no dust in hopes of clearing the last of the fog of memories from the house. The Bilbo Baggins of a year ago hadn’t gone on an adventure and lost more than he could ever replace.

Idly, he wonders when the pain will stop. When he will be able to think of Erebor without his heart hurting, without imagining he can hear the voices of his friends.

( _“Any change?”_

 _“Not since the last time y'asked me, which was an hour ago, so stop askin', y'Majesty.”_ )

There’s a part of him that isn’t sure he wants it to stop hurting, which worries him. “If it stops hurting,” he thinks, taking the chicken and tossing some herbs and new potatoes into the roasting pot with it, waving away the ashes it stirs up, “will I become boring again?”

He thinks that becoming boring again would hurt worse than the pain of his memories and so he now welcomes the voices a little. If they want to comment on things, well, they’re Dwarves. Good luck getting them to stop.

* * * * *

It’s painful to watch Thorin like this, so painful that Dwalin is close to demanding something be done (though what that would be, he doesn't know). He has never seen his king, his brother like this before, not even when Frerin was dying or when they thought they would lose Dís to complications at Kíli’s birth. He is a ghost of himself as he sits by Bilbo’s bedside with his own, ignored injuries healing sluggishly and if Thorin has ever looked so desperate as he looks when he pours soup and water into Bilbo’s mouth Dwalin can’t recall.

But the worst part is the talking. When he isn’t too tired for it, Thorin talks to Bilbo constantly about whatever crosses his mind. “Kíli is in love with an Elf, my Burglar, but I won’t throw her out until I’ve had a chance to discuss it with you.” “Fíli can stand now, but only for a moment.” “You should have heard the fight between Dori and my cousin over how to best fix the throne room—you would have laughed.” It’s like he thinks Bilbo can hear him.

It would be pathetic, if Dwalin didn’t know this hope was the only thing keeping Thorin from going insane again.

And this time there would be no recovery.

* * * * *

Bilbo’s birthday comes and goes in a red-orange fog of September. He only sends out a few gifts this time, mostly to those who had refused to partake in that ridiculous auction. They’re remarkable gifts, too, trinkets from his chest of troll-gold. He doesn’t think he’ll make a habit of that sort of thing but it was certainly enjoyable to see the look on Lobelia and Otho’s faces as the poor Miss Juniper Boffin received a hairpin with actual emeralds in it for his birthday and they got a fat nothing.

A sweet girl, Juniper. Perhaps if he ever…

No.

“A silly thought, isn’t it Thorin?” There’s no response, of course. There never was. But the voices were stubborn and refused to leave and he was terribly lonely in his smial. Talking to them couldn’t hurt. They were already calling him Mad Baggins, after all, and he found it hurt less if he spoke to the voices.

Bilbo laughs softly as he dusts his mantelpiece. His mother’s painting smiles down at him. He's not sure where Bungo's went, only that it was here when he returned and missing sometime after that. A lot of things seem to go missing before showing up again, however, so he doesn't worry. “No, no, as nice a girl as she is I don’t think I shall ever marry. You’d never approve of her, anyway, and you get so grumpy when you disapprove of something. I wouldn’t get a moment’s peace!” He moves on to his bookshelves. “I should find someone to leave Bag End to, though, if only so the SBs don’t get it. Maybe Mirabella's daughter, Primula, she's a good lass...”

He wonders if it’ll hurt, when he dies. Obviously he won’t die like Thorin did, cold and broken on the frozen river. He’ll likely die in his bed, probably alone but warm and comfortable and a respectable age. But it could still hurt. He might die of a painful stomach disease like his father’s uncle had, or maybe he’ll even end up falling from something and hitting his head wrong.

Almost on cue, the scar on his head twinges hard enough to stop his dusting. Rather than getting better, it seems to be getting worse and Bilbo wishes Gandalf would come by so he could ask if that sort of thing was normal. But he hasn’t visited since they parted ways outside of Scary all those months ago. No one has.

Bilbo is alone.

He suspects he will be alone for the rest of his life.

* * * * *

Bilbo has been moved to a private room to heal so the rest of the patients in the infirmary get some peace. Now that more Dwarves are able to find time to visit, he is almost never alone in his bed. Thorin, of course, is a constant presence by his side, demanding that Bilbo be moved to a room near his chambers so he could still sit with him as he healed himself. Kíli frequently rolls Fíli in to keep their uncle company or to watch him if Thorin must leave for whatever reason and they’ve taken to talking to their Hobbit as well.

Bifur, to the surprise of everyone, is at Bilbo’s bedside nearly as often as Thorin. His cousins suspect he remembers the stories of being watched over by his family after his own injury and he wants to return the favor in anyway he can.

He’s also the one who seems to have the most plans for when Bilbo wakes up (and with Bifur, it’s always “when”. He, like Thorin, refuses to believe that it might be an “if”). “He may be unable to speak,” he signs to Bombur one day. “We should think of ways to help him if he can’t.”

“Headaches,” he says to Ori when Ori asks what he’s thinking about. “They are terrible. We need more willow bark for Bilbo.”

(Óin grumbles about that, saying he knows damn well what they need but where the blazes are they going to get it? Kíli’s Elf-maid vanishes for a day but returns with plenty of the stuff. Óin then grumbles about how at least one Elf isn’t a poncy pain and then sets her to work grinding the stuff up for tea, grumbling about how she better not make it too fine this time.

Really, Óin grumbles a lot.)

* * * * *

( _“A fever? Now? After so long?”_

_“He is weak, Thorin, and there has been word of a fever amongst the Dwarves, one that strikes worker and noble alike. We cannot keep him in a room where the fever cannot reach him.”_

_“But he can’t fight it!”_

_“If he has lasted this long, perhaps he can.”_ )

It’s April again. Bilbo hasn’t been out of his house since Yule, not even for groceries. He sends Gamgee’s young boy to the market for him once a day and has the baskets left on the doorstep, though he doesn’t open it until he’s certain no one else is around. The one time Hamfast caught a glimpse of Mad Baggins after making a delivery, the only word he could think of to describe him was “sick”.

And perhaps he is. He throws out nearly half of what Hamfast purchases for him, his appetite slowly diminishing—and he doesn’t even request half of what most Hobbits eat anymore. He can’t remember the last time he took a proper bath; he’s just been washing off what grime he can with a cold rag. It never seems to work, though. Bag End is once again a dusty mess, though at least it is an intact dusty mess and that’s all Bilbo cares about.

His home is safe. His home has Thorin and the others in it.

He can hear their voices so clearly now. Bombur is in the kitchen, telling him about Dwarvish cuisine and how he really needs to try their chili one winter. There in the cellar are Bofur and Nori as they discuss the finer points of teasing brothers and harassing Hobbits. Fíli and Kíli—oh the lads, the lads—they spend most of their time by his fireplace, laughing and teasing each other.

But Bilbo spends most of his time in his bedroom for it is in his bedroom that he hears Thorin’s voice the clearest. A low rumble, telling him about plans for Erebor now that it’s his again. A soft laugh in the middle of a story about the lads and their antics.

A broken sob at night, begging Bilbo to wake up and come home. Telling him that he loves him and he is sorry for everything.

And that’s how he knows he’s just hearing things—of course Thorin never loved him. Thorin was his friend and nothing more.

But Bilbo loved him. He can say that now where he couldn’t before. Thorin Oakenshield was never just his friend. Thorin Oakenshield was the king of Bilbo’s heart, he was the love of his life and his loss broke Bilbo. Bilbo, who is now alone in the world without even a Wizard to call a friend.

( _“Gandalf? Is that Gandalf?”_

_“About time you returned, wizard.”_

_“Forgive me, there were matters I could not ignore. How long?”_ )

Oh, Thorin would be furious with Gandalf for abandoning Bilbo like this. He never did like him, despite the help he offered.

( _“That is a long time, Thorin. Even I may not be able to rouse him.”_

_“Try. You are the reason he is here in the first place. Try.”_

_“Very well.”_ )

Bilbo is lying on his bed, unaware of the time or day beyond it is afternoon, in April, and Hamfast came yesterday and so it’s a shock when he hears a knock on his door. He ignores it. It’s not important. He’s too tired to go and answer it anyway. He wants to sleep. He can hear Thorin’s voice clearer in his sleep.

There is a second knock, and a third, and then—“I know you are in there, Bilbo Baggins.”

…Gandalf?

The surprise of hearing Gandalf’s voice is enough to shake the cobwebs from Bilbo’s mind and urge his legs to carry him to the door. It’s slow going, but he gets there. Sure enough, there is Gandalf on his doorstep.

“You…you are late,” Bilbo accuses weakly. “I am in no mood for visitors, Gandalf. Not anymore.”

“I can see that.” If Bilbo were stronger, he’d probably care more for the look of pity that Gandalf shoots him. “But I am not a visitor. I have come to take you home.”

“Home?” There’s a slightly hysterical note to Bilbo’s laugh as he clings to the door for support. “Home. What is home, I wonder? Bag End is home, of a sort, and I am already here. I shan’t leave. It is safe here.”

“Is it? When was the last time you left your smial, Bilbo? Or even worked in your garden?”

They both glance to the overgrown mess that was once Bilbo’s prizewinning tomato patch. Gandalf continues. “Have you even planted your acorn?”

His…“My acorn?” His acorn. “From Beorn’s house? The—the one I showed Thorin, the one I wanted to plant.” Bilbo rummages through his pockets and pulls out the tiny little nut, still shiny and intact as though he had only picked it up yesterday. “N-no. I’d forgotten about it.”

“Perhaps you should plant it.” Gandalf holds out his hand and Bilbo takes it without question, allowing himself to be pulled from his smial blinking in the bright sunlight that seems to swallow everything before fading.

* * * * *

He is not in Bag End. He isn’t even in the Shire. The Shire doesn’t have stone walls and stone ceilings. They don’t have wizards blocking your view of everything…not that he can see all that much right now. His eyes feel horribly gummy and everything is blurry. He can see enough to see wizards and stone, however, and he opens his mouth to complain.

The only sound that comes out is a weak, raspy croak. He thinks Gandalf smiles from beyond the veil of blur.

“Welcome back to us, Bilbo. You’ve been asleep for a long time.”

Asleep? What? No, he hasn’t, he’s been in Bag End! He gives Gandalf what he thinks is a withering look before he moves to stand—only he can’t. His arms won’t even move.

Suddenly there is a roar ( _“Bilbo! You’re awake!”_ ) and footsteps running out the door and a warm, strong hand at his back, adjusting him so that another hand can hold a cup to his mouth. He drinks without being told, nearly sloshing the water everywhere in his desperation for water. Strange. Why is he so thirsty?

Bilbo blinks, trying to clear the blur, and a picture comes into focus. This is…this is Erebor. He is in a bed and, yes, there is Gandalf at the foot of it. He can see a chair, overturned for some reason, and a small window some distance above him. The hand at his back remains and Bilbo slowly (so slowly, as though he hasn’t moved in weeks) shifts to see who is holding him.

Thorin. Thorin is holding him and suddenly there are tears on Bilbo’s face. Strange.

“Am—” He clears his throat, his voice painful with disuse. “Am I dead, then? Or crazy?”

Thorin-ghost frowns and for a moment Bilbo believes he can see tears in his eyes as well. “No. No, my Burglar, you are neither. You are alive and awake.” He smiles. “You had a fever, one that is going around, but it broke and you are awake.”

No. No, this must be a dream. “You…you died. You and Fíli and Kíli all died, on Ravenhill. It was…t was a trap. I held you as you died. I went home to Bag End. The auction, the voices, the pain—it can’t have been a dream. It was too real.” He feels as though he could scream, but he is too tired for it.

Thorin shakes his head. “It was a near thing, but we survived,” he explains. “You…you were knocked unconscious by Bolg and thrown from the ruins onto the ice. You landed on several rocks, breaking your ribs.”

“It has been nearly three weeks since the battle,” Gandalf offers. “You’ve been asleep since then. We were afraid you wouldn’t awaken.”

“ _You_ were afraid,” Thorin growls at Gandalf. “I never gave up. I had to beg you to wake him up!”

Asleep? Since the battle? It was hard to believe, but the more Bilbo stares at Thorin or the room, the clearer it becomes and he remembers the dust that never left Bag End, the faded colors of the Shire. Perhaps it had been a dream. A terrible, painful, lonely dream.

“Bilbo?” It isn’t until Thorin speaks that Bilbo realizes he is crying in earnest now. He gently brushes away the tears. “What is it?”

“You—” A cough cuts him off and Thorin hurriedly holds the water cup to his lips, encouraging him to drink. “You’re alive.”

If what Thorin said is true and this is reality, Bilbo knows he will be slow to heal. It will be hard and painful.

It’s worth it just to see Thorin smile and gently bump his forehead against Bilbo’s as he says, “I am.”

He isn’t alone.


End file.
